Trump's $1M Offer Sparks Frenzy Days Before Elections
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WASHINGTON — President Trump offered $1 million Monday to anyone whose tips about voter fraud lead to convictions — as he ripped Sunday’s triumph by Brazil’s leftist leader as “another rigged election.”
“Anybody reporting Voter Fraud in the past Elections, or the upcoming 2026 Midterm Election, will be paid $1,000,000 upon the arrest and conviction of those that created the Fraud!” Trump wrote in a social media post shortly before departing the White House for a pre-midterms rally in Mississippi.
The president explained to reporters moments later that he was “going to be issuing a million-dollar bonus or reward or whatever you want to call it for anybody that reports voter fraud leading to the arrest and conviction of somebody.”
“We give you, that person, a million dollars,” he added under the wing of Air Force One.
Trump also said that the Brazilian election, in which President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva won a fourth term in an upset after promising government handouts, “looked so corrupt, so terrible” while calling a two-hour voting extension “very strange.”
Lula, as he is commonly known, defeated conservative Flavio Bolsonaro by more than 4 million votes. In 2023, a mob claiming fraud ransacked Brazil’s legislature after Flavio’s father, Jair Bolsonaro, lost to Lula by a narrower margin.
Trump did not specify a particular reporting mechanism to potentially receive the new financial award. Last week, the Justice Department rolled out a new bounty of $30,000 for tips that lead to fraud charges, with an emphasis on social services.
Voter fraud charges are relatively rare. The conservative Heritage Foundation’s election-fraud database lists just 557 proven instances nationally between 2016 and 2025, with that figure including criminal convictions or other judicial or official findings.
The Justice Department has increased its attention to the matter recently, particularly focusing on deterring non-citizen voting. The DOJ announced 48 such indictments Monday, while 16 others were made public Oct. 12.
Trump alleged that voter fraud cost him the 2020 presidential election, though no courts upheld his claim — and the president’s own supporters have on occasion been busted.
A 32-year-old Trump supporter was sentenced in July to six months of house arrest, three years of probation and $6,200 in fines for voting in both Pennsylvania and Florida in 2020.
